Word: batmanic
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...narrative surprise. It prowls -- slowly, so slowly -- in search of grandeur, but it often finds murk. It permits a few inside jokes (a cartoon of a bat in a suit, drawn by Kane), but mines its main humor from the Joker's ribald misanthropy ("This town needs an enema"). Batman's style is both daunting and lurching; it has trouble deciding which of its antagonists should set the tone. It can be as manic as the Joker, straining to hear the applause of outrage; it can be as implosive as Batman-Bruce, who seems crushed by the burden...
...million in cash onto the street, the good people of Gotham don't go into a looting frenzy and attack his perch. More important, the picture's first hour poses one big question: How will ace photographer Vicki Vale (Kim Basinger) react when she learns that Bruce is Batman? We never find out; the revelation occurs offscreen...
Anyone can take pleasure in the matching of Keaton and Nicholson, their dueling eyebrows poised like crossed swords. And Keaton does locate the troubled human inside Batman's armature. He is amusingly awkward wrestling with the threat that Vicki's inquisitive love represents. He knows the world is not quite worth saving, and yet, "It's just something I have to do," he says, "because nobody else can." Same with Nicholson. Who else could play the Joker? He has a patent on satanic majesty. His performance is high, soaring, gamy. He is as good, and as evil, as the film...
...could clone it. He called in cartoonist Bob Kane, then 18, and asked for a similar "super-duper" character. Kane went home, tossed the movies The Mark of Zorro and The Bat Whispers into an imaginary blender with Leonardo da Vinci's flying machine, and dreamed up Batman. The whole process took a few days...
...Batman is 50. Who cares? Well, all the fans who grew up with the character in comics and in the popular mid-'60s TV series. And the younger generation, still devouring Batman comics in a new, hipper format. And, next week, moviegoers attending the opening of Batman, with Michael Keaton as Bruce Wayne (alias the Caped Crusader) and Jack Nicholson as his nemesis the Joker. In a season when the other big-budget films are sequels, Batman should seem familiar yet fresh. At least Warner Bros., with $35 million riding on the film, hopes...